Lee's Lieutenants

by Douglas Southall Freeman

  General Grant lost patience. He decided to lower his head, as it were, to put his full weight behind his blows, and to beat down his adversary. At dawn on the morning of June 3 he attacked along the whole line in the blind, brutal action known as Second Cold Harbor. At one point he temporarily made lodgment in Confederate lines held by some of Breckinridge’s troops, but on the greater part of the front his assaults were beaten off so easily that the battle was over before some of the Confederates knew that an effort had been made to break the line. Eight minutes sufficed to show the men of three Union corps that farther advance would be suicide. At the price of not more than 1,500 casualties, the Army of Northern Virginia killed or wounded 7,000 of Grant’s men. The only injury in the Confederate high command was the wounding of E. M. Law.9

  So dispirited was the Army of the Potomac by this defeat that Grant had to give the men rest while he decided on his next step. During this pause in the fighting, time was found for another reorganization of the depleted Army of Northern Virginia. It was a necessary, an imperative reorganization. New commanders had to be provided immediately for many units. Otherwise the casualties in the high command during the bloody month of May would cost the army both discipline and leadership. The humiliating repulse of Kershaw’s brigade on June 1 had shown what might be apprehended even of veteran troops if they lacked a competent brigadier.

  In facing with reduced personnel the perennial task of finding qualified leaders, the commanding general fortunately had the benefit of a new act of Congress. This authorized the appointment of brigadier generals, major generals, and lieutenant generals to hold rank “for such time as the temporary exigency may require,” then to revert to their regular status. The new law permitted appointments to fill vacancies that otherwise would last as long as the illness or other physical incapacity of a general officer continued.10

  As authorized by this act, it seemed proper that Dick Anderson should be given the temporary rank of lieutenant general while commanding the First Corps during the absence of Longstreet, who now was recovering, though slowly. Anderson had won advancement by his famous march to Spotsylvania. He had fought prudently and intelligently there. Although Lee had directed him much more closely than he would have thought of doing in the case of the senior corps officers, Anderson had shown no lack of stalwart qualities for his new post. If he was not brilliant he was dependable. At Cold Harbor, June 1, his handling of the advance and subsequent defense had not been good, but the fault may have been Hoke’s.

  Another lieutenant general was to be named because it was manifest that Ewell could not resume safely his duties as commander of the Second Corps while the army was in a furious field campaign. He must be given an easier post until the battles of the summer were past. This did not suit Ewell and it acutely displeased Mrs. Ewell. In the end, reluctantly, Old Bald Head accepted direction of the Department of Richmond. If he had not shown uniformly, after his return to the army at the end of May 1863, the dash and decision that had marked him under Jackson, the reason was simply that he was never the same man in body or mind after the loss of his leg at Groveton. Transfer of Ewell dictated, on May 31, the promotion of Early to lieutenant general on the same temporary footing with Dick Anderson.11

  These two promotions left vacancies in Early’s and in Anderson’s divisions. For these positions the decision of Lee was prompt and probably was not doubtful. Anderson’s senior brigadier, William Mahone, was entirely qualified for promotion, though his opportunities in the field had been fewer than might have been assumed for a man who had been a brigadier from November 16, 1861. Early’s successor was Dodson Ramseur. This might have been a surprise, because Ramseur had been a brigadier of Rodes and not of Early, but John Pegram’s wounds and Gordon’s promotion had left in Early’s division no officer then qualified for promotion. Ramseur had won the honor by a career of consistently fine, hard fighting.

  Besides these two appointments to temporary rank as major generals, Joseph B. Kershaw’s command of McLaws’s division was made permanent. This action strengthened the First Corps and rewarded the admirable service of one of the ablest of the South Carolina general officers. All three of these appointments were fortunate. Several times Lee had lamented that his inability to get rid of a mediocre senior had prevented the advancement of a much abler junior. In these instances, except as McLaws unhappily was involved, the three deserved promotion. None of them might prove a Jackson or a Longstreet, but none of them was apt to fail.

  Permanent promotion as brigadier general went to Colonel Bryan Grimes, who was assigned to the command of the dead Junius Daniel’s North Carolina troops. This advancement came because Grimes was in line of promotion, was qualified, and had been much distinguished at the Bloody Angle. The able, diligent, always courageous Colonel James Conner at last had sufficiently recovered from an old wound to take the field, and he was made brigadier general and assigned temporarily the brigade of the wounded Samuel McGowan. To Rufus Barringer, a cavalry colonel of excellent record, went the insignia of brigadier general and the fine regiments of James B. Gordon, killed at Yellow Tavern. Of temporary brigadiers, five were named: Colonel William R. Cox of the 2nd North Carolina to take Ramseur’s brigade; Colonel Thomas F. Toon of the 20th North Carolina to handle the men of the injured Robert Johnston; Lieutenant Colonel William G. Lewis of the 43rd North Carolina to direct John Pegram’s brigade while that officer was wounded; Colonel Zebulon York of the 14th Louisiana to lead the combined Louisiana brigades until Harry Hays recovered; and Lieutenant Colonel R. D. Lilley of the 25th Virginia to command Early’s old brigade. All these were solid men of character but, with the exception of Cox, they scarcely could be termed conspicuous. They were simply the best that could be chosen quickly and without manifest unfitness from an officers’ corps that had no superfluity of talent after the loss of so many able officers.

  How much the army command had suffered in the Wilderness and at Spotsylvania no statistician set forth at the time. The list was longer than in any previous campaign and nothing short of terrifying. Of the fifty-eight general officers present from May 4 through June 3, 1864, eight were killed, twelve wounded, and two captured. The killed were: First Corps, Micah Jenkins; Second Corps, Junius Daniel, George Doles, John M. Jones, and Leroy A. Stafford; Third Corps, Abner Perrin; Cavalry Corps, Jeb Stuart and James B. Gordon. The following sustained wounds severe enough to incapacitate them for command, temporarily or permanently: First Corps, James Longstreet, E. M. Law, and Henry L. Benning; Second Corps, Harry Hays, Robert D. Johnston, John Pegram, and James A. Walker; Third Corps, John R. Cooke, James H. Lane, Samuel McGowan, Edward L. Perry, and Henry H. Walker. The captured generals were Edward Johnson and George H. Steuart. By rank the casualties ran in this manner: killed, one major general and seven brigadiers; wounded, one lieutenant general and eleven brigadier generals; captured, one major general and one brigadier.

  In addition, the commanding general had been almost incapacitated by diarrhea for a week; one corps commander, Hill, had been too sick for almost a fortnight to direct his troops; and the other corps chief, Ewell, had been failing so steadily in vigor that he had to be relieved of duty. In the First and Second Corps, two experienced divisional leaders, R. H. Anderson and Early, had been separated from their commands and corps, for a part of the campaign, in order to direct other corps.

  These changes were more far-reaching than anyone seems to have realized at the time. Faith in the army itself was so unshakable that the President, the War Department, and General Lee apparently believed the normal process of training would be reversed: Instead of the generals instructing the troops, the veterans would school their new commanders. Within the limits of the tactics of everyday combat, this might prove true, but it could not be true of discipline and morale in a time of continuing discouragement and waning hope. A new development, a stern challenge, was to be expected daily. Liaison with Beauregard and his newly arrived troops would be imperative. At a time when experience would be required
to effect swift cooperation, two of the corps of Lee’s army would be in the charge of men who had exercised that command less than a month. Of the nine divisions, two in the First Corps were under promising men, Kershaw and Field, though they scarcely could be regarded as fully seasoned at their higher rank. Two of the divisional leaders of the Second Corps were entirely new to that duty, Gordon and Ramseur. One of the three divisional chiefs of the Third Corps, Mahone, had never acted in that capacity for any length of time before the eighth of May. The only major generals left with the army who had led divisions as recently as Gettysburg were Pickett, who now was returning from detached service, Rodes, who had done admirably in Spotsylvania County, and Harry Heth, who carried some new odium for the events of May 6. None of these older major generals had directed as many as four brigades in any hard action before Chancellorsville.

  The battles of a single month had put 37 per cent of the general officers of the Army of Northern Virginia hors de combat. Except as. Lee himself embodied it, the old organization was gone!

  2

  THREE MORE FEDERAL DIVERSIONS

  On other fronts in Virginia, the week after Cold Harbor brought alarms and advances. The first of these was in the Shenandoah Valley. There Franz Sigel had been relieved of command after he was defeated at New Market, May 15, by Breckinridge. The force under Breckinridge had consisted of John Echols’s and Gabriel Wharton’s brigades, to which in the emergency the small cadet corps of the Virginia Military Institute was added. When battle was joined near New Market, the cadets had fought with a disciplined courage and a consistent élan that added to the prestige of the remarkable school without which the Army of Northern Virginia could not have had competent regimental command in the first year of the war. Seldom did a small victory have so large an effect. Had Sigel not been driven back, the Valley of Virginia might have been occupied by the Federals before the wheat crop was harvested. Hunger would have come sooner. The prospect of losing the western end of the Virginia Central Railroad might have compelled Lee to send part of his army to the Valley while pressure at Spotsylvania was heaviest. Short as was the time saved by the Battle of New Market, it was invaluable.12

  Now, in the first week of June, Sigel’s successor, David Hunter, was moving rapidly up the Shenandoah. At Piedmont he attacked and defeated a scratch force of about 5,000 under Grumble Jones. About 1,000 Confederate prisoners were taken. In a tragic end to a tragic life, Jones himself was killed. The next day, June 6, Hunter occupied Staunton. He was joined there by George Crook, returning from his raid on the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. The combined forces of Hunter and Crook were in position to do vast military mischief. To delay them, Breckinridge and his 2,100 men were started from Cold Harbor for Lynchburg, whence they could move to the upper Valley or dispute a crossing of the Blue Ridge.13

  Before a decision could be reached for any larger action against Hunter, it was discovered that Sheridan had started on another raid. Reporting this movement, Wade Hampton reasoned that Sheridan would strike for Gordonsville and Charlottesville, to effect a junction with Hunter. On June 8, Hampton was ordered to proceed after the enemy with his own and Fitz Lee’s division. This order was an approach to a reorganization. After Stuart’s death, Lee had each cavalry division report directly to him—almost certainly to avoid a choice between Hampton and Fitz Lee as successor to the dead commander of the cavalry corps. Now that the divisions of these rivals had to operate together at a distance from Richmond, there was no safe alternative to applying the army regulation which entrusted command to the senior. This gave Hampton the greatest opportunity that had come to him during the war.14

  While Hampton was en route on that ninth of June, a critical alarm reached army headquarters from Petersburg, through Bragg’s office. A third diversion had begun—a surprise attack was being delivered on that city. Beauregard telegraphed: “Without the troops sent to General Lee I will have to elect between abandoning lines on Bermuda Neck and those of Petersburg.”15 In mid-afternoon of June 9, then, the high command of the Army of Northern Virginia faced this situation: Grant with his powerful host was directly in front; Hunter was in Staunton and preparing to march, his objective unknown; Sheridan was headed for the Virginia Central and possibly a junction with Hunter. The activity around Petersburg did not appear to Lee to be more than a reconnaissance, but there was no way of determining what adventure might follow the reconnaissance.

  To cope swiftly and vigorously with these three diversions was a grim assignment for a tired, weakened army. The nearest of the three operations proved the easiest to combat. A clumsy, half-hearted attack on Petersburg was repulsed by the effort of Beauregard’s troops, old civilians, boys too young for military service, and jail prisoners released on their promise to fight. After dark on June 9 the attacking force withdrew.16

  On the ninth and tenth Hampton’s troopers followed the long, hot, dusty road to Louisa Court House. Hampton’s superb endurance served him well, and during the night of the tenth he collected information about the enemy’s movements. He learned to his immeasurable relief that his column, on the shorter are, had reached the Virginia Central ahead of the enemy. The railroad was intact and in operation, but its safety had been assured by the thinnest of margins. Carefully Hampton questioned the natives and studied his map. Toward the enemy at Clayton’s Store led two roads, one from Louisa Court House, the other from Trevilian Station. His conclusion was to proceed with his own division from Trevilian while Fitz Lee advanced from Louisa. Their columns would be converging, with the hope to close and hurl the enemy against the North Anna. This was, for an inferior force, a plan of great boldness.

  By dawn of June 11, Hampton had his troopers in the saddle. Butler and Young were made ready for the advance. Rosser was held in reserve to protect the trains and led horses. A courier brought a message from Fitz Lee that his division at Louisa was moving out. Hampton passed word to Cal-braith Butler. In a few minutes, shouts and an exchange of fire showed that the enemy had been encountered. Hampton then dismounted the remainder of Butler’s men and sent them forward in line of battle. When the enemy made a stand, he immediately sent Young to reinforce Butler. Hampton felt confident he would effect a junction with Fitz Lee in a short time.

  Scene of the cavalry battle at Trevilian Station, June 11, 1864.

  At that promising moment, Hampton received startling intelligence. The enemy was in his rear. From the Louisa Road Custer’s Union brigade had slipped past Fitz Lee’s force by a woods road and soon found itself among Hampton’s wagons. Nearby were about 800 of Butler’s led horses. This fine booty Custer was collecting when Hampton was told what had happened. He of course had to break away from the Federals on the Trevilian-Clayton Store road and devote his fire to Custer.

  There followed as bewildering a fight as the Confederate cavalry ever had waged. At one moment Hampton’s withdrawal appeared to be a rout; at another, Custer seemed in danger of destruction. Fitz Lee closed on him from the east, Rosser from the west, Butler from the north. In the end, the Confederates recovered all their lost horses and vehicles and captured some of the Federals’; Custer contrived to hold Trevilian Station and the adjoining track. Fitz Lee was separated for the night from Hampton, but Custer had been so badly crippled and the entire Union force so roughly handled that Sheridan did not press the fight. The next afternoon several furious attacks by the bluecoats were repulsed with heavy loss. The Union commander decided it was unwise to continue his attempt to join Hunter. That night, having destroyed part of the railroad track, Sheridan abandoned the campaign and recrossed the North Anna.

  Although the heavy Confederate losses at Trevilian Station included a painful wound for Tom Rosser, the operation could not be regarded otherwise than as a Southern victory. It was the most encouraging small action to that date in Virginia during 1864 and it equaled Stuart’s final performance.17

  Insofar as the Battle of Trevilian Station involved Hampton’s leadership, it showed him capable and careful. He beli
eved in superiority of force and exerted himself to concentrate all the men he could at the point of contact. A man who displayed on the field of battle highly intelligent leadership and the most unflinching courage could not fail to impress his soldiers. Increasingly Wade Hampton won favor as the best procurable successor to the lamented Stuart. If Fitz Lee cherished still the ambition to take the place of his beloved Jeb, he was too good a soldier and too honorable a patriot to withhold full support.

  The larger effect of Hampton’s victory was to dispose of the second diversion undertaken by Grant and to simplify the abatement of the third threat, that offered by Hunter’s advance up the Shenandoah Valley. On the day of the first grapple at Trevilian Station, June 11, Hunter entered Lexington. When it became manifest that action against him had to be taken, the decision was to do this effectively. The forces sent to drive Hunter from the Valley should be strong enough to pursue him and, if possible, threaten Washington. For this large enterprise an entire corps would be required. The honor and responsibility of the mission went to Jube Early. The old “Army of the Valley” belonged to his Second Corps, and its presence on the Shenandoah would be reassuring. Furthermore, Early was a man of independent mind, entirely self-reliant, and with an aptitude for strategy. He was not a Jackson or even a Longstreet, but he had some knowledge of the Valley and he appeared to be the most available man.18

  Before the first glint of dawn on June 13, Early’s men were moving. He had scarcely more than the bone of the famous old corps. Eight thousand muskets were all he could count, with two battalions of artillery. Of the twelve brigadier generals in command at the opening of the Wilderness campaign, one only, Cullen Battle, remained in charge of the same troops. Ramseur and Gordon had been promoted; all the others had been killed, wounded, or captured within less than six weeks.